Macarena’s murder is not the first attack on the Mapuche people, which has been arrested. It is a conflict that comes from far away. What does it consist of?

It is the conflict between the Chilean State and the Mapuche People, not the Mapuche. This is an economic conflict that arises from the ambition generated by the Chilean State once independence has been achieved. This is a conflict that is 140 years old.

During the occupation of Araukania, the newborn Chilean State assumed the great wealth of the south of the Biobio region of the Mapuche people invading lands. He decided to break the Tapihue pact that he had already signed, in which the Chilean State recognizes the Mapuche Nation as a free and sovereign nation, and proposed to grow as a sister nation. Seeing that the Mapuche People had too many advantages and lived in a land that was too fertile, they decided to occupy them. To this end, a low-intensity war was launched. They invade us and kill us. Today, war continues.

After the Pinochet dictatorship, the Chilean economy has focused on the massive extraction of natural resources, and the companies that work on it have the support of the State. In the face of this situation, companies are moving forcefully towards anyone who puts them ahead.

Not only have they killed Maca, but many people in the same context. What happens is that Macarena is the first Mapuche woman to have been killed for fighting in defense of the land. Despite the fact that men have been criminalized and murdered, they have realized that the strength of the Mapuche people resides in women, which is why they have resisted the conflict. In that case, they have changed their strategy. Unfortunately, this change of strategy has taken place with us, and my partner has been killed.

A car from the company RP Global went to threaten you and the following day, on August 22, 2016, he appeared hanged dead from the roof of the house Macarena. Death was declared a suicide, but those who knew Maca's it was hard to believe that he had committed suicide.

Look, La Negra, as he calls Macara's, had incredible energy. It's hard to imagine that a person with so much energy can commit suicide. On the day of his death, he was preparing to take the bus to the health center. Previously, the child bathed, changed clothes and diapers and ate. The person who is thinking about committing suicide does the food to their family. When I got home, the food and his bag were on the table with my son's medical card. A person who wants to die does not make plans for the future. She was a happy woman who had no intention of committing suicide.

The day after Macarena's death, the company's workers came forward to install the wiring of the hydroelectric power plant.

On August 23, they called me saying they were laying cables, and I immediately called the police, saying they were not going to put cables. I explained to them that they were politically committed because we had shown that the company was carrying out illegal activities and we had denounced it. They told me they couldn't do anything from the police, and I said: “Yesterday my partner was killed and today many Mapuches are approaching that are against wiring. Something more serious can happen here. We can ask for the withdrawal or have more deaths.” The police, aware of the magnitude of the problem, called the carabineros and the police and technicians retired without wiring. But on 9 September, they started a process against me using as an excuse the threat of burning a truck. Last October the special forces of the police – the paramilitary police – used to force the installation of cable.

The suspicion that these events were related to Macarena's death was gaining strength and they decided to exhume the body to see what had caused the death under satisfactory conditions.

In October 2016, understanding that everything is related, a criminal complaint was made about Macarena's death. The complaint had a period of two years to be investigated, but in March 2017 we were called saying that the investigation would be closed. That day we called the demonstration to go to court with people, and we managed to keep the investigation open on condition that the experts pay for us the corpse to exhume it. We started looking for the money and after five months we had enough to pay an expert. On 9 August 2017, while they were presenting the expert report, we found the research closed again. The investigation, which had a period of two years, was closed twice before the end of a year.

So we went to the regional prosecutor's office. The expert’s report showing that the first official autopsy had been carried out badly was so strong that the investigation had to be reopened. On 25 September, the date for exhumation was set, and it was made with the drawbacks. On October 30, the autopsy was carried out and two samples of the sample were kept, one for examination by the state's forensic doctors and another for transfer to a private laboratory. The result of the private lab test was received in January 2018, which showed that he had died before Macarena was hanged. They hung it because you can't hang a dead person on your own. Someone had put him there when he died. It was a murder.

We then asked that the investigation be modified to investigate a qualified murder rather than suicide. Qualified, because it is not a simple murder, since he was first murdered and then tried to cover up the murder, offering money to the coroner to sign the first false autopsy. The Prosecutor’s Office responded that it could not change the course of the investigation, claiming that there was not enough evidence for it, although we presented the expert report in January. As if it were not enough, before sending to the laboratory the sample of the second autopsy that forensic doctors should study, asked a doctor to make a critical analysis of the procedure of our expert, questioning our expert. They don't want to take a sample of the autopsy that's in their hands to the lab, because they know that they'll get the same result as us, and if they transfer it to the lab, they'll assume that they killed Macarena and they'll have to investigate the event. Because those who tried to hide the murder would be exposed. As the doctor who performed the first autopsy, he had previously signed two other false autopsies, in which the murder was considered a suicide.

At the moment, the trial is open, but with all these irregularities, as there are seven convicts. That is why we have decided to go out and seek international support.

During the Pinochet dictatorship, many Mapuche left the territory and changed their names for fear of violence and to remain marginalized. You and Macarena lived in Santiago and decided to leave the city and move to the Mapuche community. Is the descendant of that uprooted generation taking the path of taking root again?

More and more Mapuche youths decided to return to the Mapuche lands, to live again as a Mapuche. The earth calls you, it's inevitable, we didn't want to live in the cement forest, the city had poisoned us. People live stressed, tight, running from one side to the other, very angry. In fact, they don't live, they survive in the city in their attempt to make money. Because everything is measured by money, and the more money you have, the more purchasing power you have, and the more you buy, the more joyful and the more successful you are. People spend 350 days a year working, like slaves, looking at a wall, nailed on the computer screen, suffering a boss who mistreates them. 350 days a year working in this way to raise funds and be happy fifteen days. And in those 15 days, they decide to come to where we live 365 days a year. So we lived on vacation, we understood that. Where we live, people come to breathe, to be happy. So our four sons, Macarena and the six, lived happily. But they came to make our lives dirty.